Penelope Fitzgerald

Name: Penelope Fitzgerald

Gender: Female

Age: 16

Grade: 11

School: Cochise High School

Hobbies and Interests: Video games (both playing and developing), drawing, roleplaying, fashion, robotics

Appearance: Penelope is slightly shorter than average (5'4") and is of a normal weight (124 pounds). Penelope has a fairly average build with no outstanding physical features. She is light skinned. Her hair is shoulder length and straight, typically seen in a scene cut. Her hair is naturally blonde, but it is dyed black with red highlights per her fashion choices. Her face is full and round with a small nose and thin eyebrows. She has visible dimples when she smiles. Her ears, lower lip, and belly button are pierced, with small turtle shaped earrings, spider bites ring piercings on the left side of her lower lip, and a bead belly button piercing. She has relaxed, calm posture most of the time. Her eyes are bright green, and she typically wears eye shadow to emphasize them. Her nails are normally painted black or green.

Penelope is typically found wearing dark, form fitting t-shirts or tank tops. She usually pairs these with similarly dark colored skirts and leggings or skinny jeans, and is usually found wearing a pair of brown heeled boots regardless of outfit. She occasionally wears arm warmers to go with short sleeved t-shirts, usually for fashion rather than function. On the day of the abduction, she was wearing a black short sleeved t-shirt, dark grey arm warmers, black leggings, a black ruffled skirt, and her normal pair of brown heeled boots.

Biography: Penelope is the oldest child of three, born to Daniel Fitzgerald and Emily Fitzgerald in Kingman, Arizona. Two years later her two siblings, twins Alice and Annie, were born. Daniel works as an elementary school teacher and Emily works as a radiologist at the local hospital. Penelope generally gets along well with her entire family. She has a great deal of respect for both her mother and her father, and appreciates all the time she spends with them. As for her sisters, when she was younger she got slightly jealous at the attention that they would get over her, but she soon grew out of it, and has since acted as a mentor figure to the both of them throughout their lives. Due to her parents both working, when Penelope was younger her and her sisters were kept in daycare while their parents were away at their jobs.

In her early life outside of daycare, Penelope spent a lot of her time playing on her father's old NES and SNES game systems. Her initial interest was sparked when her father managed to find his old systems and games and gave them to her as a gift when she was four. She enjoyed playing video games simply because they were fun; she liked using them to pass the time and enjoyed being challenged in an environment where failure held no real consequences. She played games like The Legend of Zelda, Super Metroid, Street Fighter, and over time she became very good at playing them through repetition over long stretches of time. Eventually, she got her own newer systems with newer games, and eventually branched out into PC gaming, where she fell in love with roguelike games due to their difficulty and the skill required to beat them. Over the years she participated in competitive gaming in tourneys on occasion, namely with fighting games such as Street Fighter and Guilty Gear, due to wanting to show off her skill and mechanical prowess at the finely tuned and well designed games. She usually ended up placing moderately high in the tournaments, but never quite at the top. Once in high school, she started becoming interested in creating games of her own. She started learning various coding languages and basic modding work, with most of her creations not seeing the light of day outside of her core group of friends. She hopes one day to be able to make a good, balanced fighting game or a challenging but fair roguelike similar to the games she plays.

Once Penelope entered elementary school, she started out by being very shy until directly approached, at which point she opened up to being very energetic and fun loving. Soon she gained a reputation as such, and became rather well liked by the rest of her classmates, even if she never became particularly close to most of them. It was also during elementary school that Penelope showed that she was very smart through scoring exceptional marks on the standardized tests, but never made a big deal out of it for fear of getting bullied like the other gifted students in her class. Even so, her smarts allowed her to easily ace all of the work that was put in front of her.

In Penelope's later elementary school years, after being inspired by her school's art class, she began drawing regularly as a hobby. Her initial drawings weren't very high quality, but her parents encouraged her habit and she improved slowly over time, usually with the help of her art teacher or various books. By high school her drawings were of relatively good quality and workmanship, and she often would be found drawing fanart of whatever video game or webcomic she was obsessed about at that present moment, and posting it online on her tumblr blog.

Shortly after Penelope entered middle school, she soon found for the first time a real interest in fashion and the art of aesthetics after she felt a bit awkward about her own looks compared to the other girls and wanted to improve. She tried all sorts of different styles of outfits, having a lot of fun in creating them and seeing what looked good and what didn't, and enjoying how clothing can significantly change how one looks and how one is presented. Every outfit had its own personality to her, and eventually she began resonating with the personality of the emo/scene style after seeing some of the scenester girls at her middle school and trying out some of the style herself. Her parents supported her expressing herself, within reason, and she soon had dyed, styled her hair, and dressed in scenester clothing the majority of the time. Even after settling on a style, she still had a penchant for remaining in good looking outfits no matter what she wore, and eventually grew out of her scene phase, even if she did keep the hairstyle and the piercings that she got in early high school. To the modern day she still makes an effort to be fashionable and make sure that no matter what outfit she's wearing, it looks good and she looks good in it.

Penelope has a severe case of hemophobia. While the hemophobia did not have a specific event that started it, Penelope had always been at the very least uncomfortable when exposed to blood and bleeding, especially her own. This fear is usually triggered by the actual bleeding or blood leaving the body, usually not the blood just by itself, and the fear is never triggered by fake blood in movies and video games. The fear is enough to make her faint or become nauseous, and she usually has to take measures to keep herself calm with breathing exercises, stopping or covering the bleeding as soon as possible, and keeping her eyes away from any sort of blood or bleeding, such as when she got her piercings in early high school or had to get blood taken in the hospital.

In high school, Penelope soon found two new major interests; roleplaying and robotics. After her discovery of the thriving online roleplaying community, Penelope was soon enthralled and began participating in not only play by post roleplays but also IRC roleplay, usually pertaining to roleplay based in real life or in fantasy settings. She enjoyed the chance to think about how others with different life experiences thought and consider scenarios that she would never directly experience herself in significantly more detail than she would get in her gaming hobby. Her interest in robotics bloomed not long after she began reading the works of Isaac Asimov and was overwhelmed with how cool the idea of humans potentially creating sentient artificial intelligence was to her. She soon found the robotics club in Cochise, and while they didn't end up creating any true artificial intelligence, she still had a lot of fun learning about robotics and building robots with the rest of the club.

Penelope is known by her peers for being a very relaxed, kind, and fun loving person. She's extremely slow to anger and always tries to look at the bright side of things, lending to her getting along well with the majority of people she meets, even if she only has a handful of people that she would call her friends. Penelope has an issue with being impulsive, acting without thinking deeply frequently, resulting in her getting in trouble on several occasions. Penelope is an idealist and truly believes in the good in the world and those around her, and always sees ways that things could get better as long as everyone works together towards a common goal. Incidentally, Penelope is very empathetic towards other living creatures of any variety, thinking all life deserves to live just as much as any other life, and is a vegetarian and devout pacifist because of it. She considers killing or hurting other living beings to be absolutely unthinkable, and would sooner let herself come to harm than hurt others.

Penelope does well in school. She rarely ends up truly challenging herself due to being a chronic procrastinator, taking mostly general courses outside of the sciences which she is passionate about, and focusing on her creative endeavors rather than school. She manages easy A's in all of her classes because of her intellect, despite her procrastination. Penelope is currently considering Arizona State University for her post-high school education, and is considering becoming a video game designer as a future career.

Advantages: Penelope is smart and clever, which would presumably allow her to think herself out of bad situations in a pinch. Penelope is an idealist and optimist, which could keep her from being overcome by despair come island time. Penelope is likeable, relaxed, and kind, which could help her make and keep allies. Additionally, Penelope's ability to stay calm and relaxed no matter the circumstances should help her keep her head come island time.

Disadvantages: Penelope has a severe and completely irrational case of hemophobia that developed suddenly when she was young, and could easily faint at the sight of her own blood and the blood of others. Penelope is a pacifist, and would be unlikely to ever try to hurt or kill others, and at the very least would likely make her hesitate at critical moments. Penelope is also impulsive, which may lead to poor decision making in stressful situations that she might wind up in.

Designated Number: Female student No. 013

---

Designated Weapon: Book for ‘Learning Spanish in 30 Days’

Conclusion: No veo cómo hemofobia será bueno y con ella el pacifismo? Atornillado. (At least that's what the book thinks)- Josie Knight

'The above biography is as written by VoltTurtle. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: VoltTurtle

Kills: None

Killed By: Dorothy Shelley

Collected Weapons: Book for ‘Learning Spanish in 30 Days’ (assigned weapon)

Allies: Ben Fields, Raina Rose, Kiziah Saraki, Lili Williams, Johnny McKay

Enemies: Dorothy Shelley

Mid-game Evaluation: Penelope woke up in one of the staff gym changing rooms, and was tempted to pull her collar and kill herself but ultimately decided against it. She left and found Brendan Harte in the other changing room, but he didn't stick around long. Asuka Takahara appeared at this point and asked for a hug, which Penelope granted without worry. They talked about their petty motivations and lives from before the game, Penelope also mentioning her goal to find her boyfriend Samuel Howard. Penelope's stated plan was to gather the class and prevent them from killing, so they could as a group die on their own terms. Asuka wasn't convinced, having plans of her own, and the two girls parted ways. Penelope wandered the island for the rest of the day and rested in the B dorm rooms, only seeing unfamiliar faces she avoided, among them Isabel Ramirez.

Before announcements sounded, Penelope entered the lobotomy room in the twilight hours of Day 2, where Astrid Tate was lying in wait. Astrid had intended to shoot whoever came into the room, but she couldn't bring herself to do it before Penelope found her while searching around. Before they could properly speak the announcements interrupted them, Penelope was driven to tears by the revelations. She begged Astrid to not die on her. Astrid, in turn, revealed her intent to play to survive. Penelope was shocked, but quickly grew more outraged as she tried to convince her friend against what she considered a reprehensible and evil recourse.

Astrid responded with outrage in turn, and Penelope tried to call her bluff by demanding that Astrid shoot her if she was determined to kill. Astrid pulled the trigger, revealing that the gun was fake, but Penelope could tell from her shocked reaction that she hadn't known anymore than Penelope had. Upset and angry, Penelope implored Astrid one last time to change her mind before leaving, wishing her former friend peace no matter what she chose. She wandered upstairs, and took shelter in an empty solitary confinement cell.

She was prepared to suffer through Day 3 announcements, but the news of Sam's death was a brutal blow, as she had come to count on him as an emotional rock to anchor herself to. She felt her former hopes slip away into a death spiral, and as she hyperventilated she experienced a vision of committing suicide from the bridge. She spent several hours in this state before awakening, and she felt no better upon awakening, desiring to kill herself still but having no energy to peel herself off the floor. She was found by Ben Fields, and they exchanged awkward conversation where Penelope readily revealed her suicidal intent. She tried to deflect him from further conversation when his friend William McKinley arrived, and she remained silent for some time until the focus of both boys turned to her. Ben tried to get her to explain her plan, and she did but sans hope for it's success. Ben and Will both took turns trying to encourage her, calling on empathy and a sense of hope. Penelope took heart and decided to give it another try before she gave in, asking them both to join her. Will had to decline, but promised he'd try to spread the word. That left Ben and Penelope to awkwardly discuss their plan from thereon, to reminisce on the past while moving forward to the future.

Penelope and Ben spent Day 4 quietly wandering the asylum until they wound up on it's rooftop by evening fall. Penelope conversed with Ben earnestly, as he awkwardly parried her often destitute musing on the evils of island and the long term consequences of following her plan. Her philosophy didn't waver and she inspired him, they continued on with a mutual sense of purpose and duty.

They thus ascended the helipad on Day 5, hoping to find anyone who'd been attracted to the pyre lit earlier on Day 4, by the now deceased Taranis "Tara" Behzad. Penelope found a friend, Raina Rose, atop the helipad and her emotions immediately bested her, she ran to her friend and embraced her. Penelope tried to talk more casual matters but Raina quickly seized on a throwaway line and tried to get Penelope to explain her plan, Penelope did earnestly. Raina seemed a bit hesitant but was willing to accept the plan provided they first made an attempt to free the class of the terrorists, Penelope was glad to accept that despite her personal disbelief, for her friends sake. After a bit of awkward shuffling about and Raina tentatively setting their future goals as finding other potential allies she'd already met, Lili Williams or Johnny McKay, Penelope proposed they rest for a while. They did, and Penelope fell asleep while cuddling Raina. She suffered from a vivid nightmare that confronted her with her own unvoiced fears and doubts about having assigned herself to death. Ben asked when she came to, Penelope refused to acknowledge it had happened. She made the call for them to start moving on to find others, trying her best to dismiss her nightmare and maintain her leadership.

They settled for a rest on the northwestern cliffs due to Day 5's danger zone cutting them off from reaching their initial goal, the warehouse. They didn't have much chance to talk before Penelope noticed a figure in the distance and ran to intercept before she could be stopped, the figure was Kimiko Kao, who Penelope didn't recognize by name. Penelope decided to offer Kimiko a peaceful stay with herself and her friends, and Kimiko silently followed along. Penelope found, however, that Ben and Raina were more hostile than she was to Kimiko, and she learned why when Raina affirmed Kimiko's name. Penelope was shocked, Kimiko was the killer of her best friend Cristo Morales, and she was suddenly overwhelmed by the memories, and fear. She began to cry and freak out, without Penelope's control of the situation Raina and Ben stepped in and forced Kimiko to retreat, which only further hurt Penelope as she'd hoped there could have been some way still to talk things out with Kimiko. She continued to cry and ask for apology, Ben and Raina did their best to cheer Penelope up and treat it as a learning scenario. After some quiet time resting Penelope was able to return to some of her old affected cheer and lead them forward once more.

They explored the Staff B dorms, where Day 6 announcements once more deeply wounded Penelope. Ben found Kiziah Saraki and Lili Williams together in one of the dorm rooms, Penelope was very glad to see them. The conversation briefly involved sharing their past designs, including the idea Kizi had earlier developed about creating a peaceful sanctuary for non-killers. Penelope segued that discussion into a sharing of her own plan, carefully explaining the rationale and the remaining possibility of escape. Raina backed her up still, and a melding of the plans proved to be satisfactory to all. All of them were drawn into a discussion of the practicals and ideas for execution, and the mood among the others ran high. Penelope also productively contributed and encouraged the others as they made contributions, until memories of her disturbing dream and her failures caused her to quiet. She called for them to rest for a while before they set off, but as she once more sought shelter in Raina's embrace she couldn't help but remain haunted, and she increasingly began to realize that she was truly afraid for what was possibly to come.

As they had explored the asylum the declaring of danger zones had forced them away from their plans, and separated them from Kizi, Lili, and Ben. Her doubt continued to eat at her as they explored the staff library, and Samuel resurfaced in her thoughts and she began to weaken. She was briefly interrupted by the appearance of Benjamin Lichter, and the consideration of recruiting him to the plan, but her mood had faltered to where that impulse was quickly dismissed. She continued to reflect on Sam, and she began to sob, shutting out the outside- the Johnny they had been searching for had also made himself known- to rant to both Raina and herself, to entertain anger for the first time as she began to wonder how she could possibly react to the man she knew had killed Sam. Raina tried to comfort her despite her own attention being split between the various folks in the room. It all haunted her, the continuing percolation of thoughts of her coming death and what impact it would have on her loved ones as well, she calmed down for Raina and Johnny's sake and suggested they moved on, but the smile she wore doing so was forced.

They returned to the asylum the morning of Day 8, to find the others. But the others had been found first, the group walked in onto a grisly bloody scene with Lili and Alessio Rigano at front and center, and Penelope's hemophobia kicked in and she passed out. When she came to she was in Raina's arms, and the woozy questions she had were filled in by Danya's announcement. Ben had been killed, to Penelope's horror, but she had a more immediate situation on her hands. Raina had taken a stand against the presence of Al, who was a well known murderer at that point, and was demanding he leave. Penelope believed there was a chance that they could do something for Al, she argued they let him stay, even as Lili would quickly confirm Al had murdered Kizi earlier. Raina seemed to reach a breaking point and refused to entertain Penelope's wishes, Johnny stood by her. Raina was intent on her own plan, the escape she'd been trying to cook up, and Penelope hesitatingly went far as to try and deflate that plan, pointing out the impossibilities, to make Raina understand that forgiveness and peace was their best approach or their class had no hopes. The room was cold, Al abandoned them distraught, Lili quickly followed, taking the weapons they'd had with her and depriving Penelope of an easy suicide as her out. That left Penelope to ruminate, and openly admit her fears and the depths of her internal despair, but she still maintained some hope that they as a unit could accomplish something despite the collapse of their alliance.

They wandered for a while, after Day 9 announcements they attempted to retire to the asylum library to rest but Penelope finally found Samuel's corpse, among the shelves. She suffered from contrasting emotions, horrible sadness, anger she was guilty for feeling, she tried to hug it out with Raina. They were interrupted by Dorothy Shelley, whose odd demeanor and casual approach was supposedly the result of a concussion. Penelope was able to recover a bit, and explain some of what had happened, Dorothy was apparently curious about the killer and after some hesitation Penelope named Min-jae. Something in Penelope's response seemed to set off Dorothy, she started laughing mad and then lunged to stab Penelope in an artery of the leg. Raina lunged to Penelope's aid and Dorothy ran off, leaving Raina to screech for Johnny and to start trying first aid. Once more Penelope's acute fear of death paralyzed her, haunted her thoughts, after a period of trying to direct Raina and Johnny to help her out Penelope began to acknowledge her dying out loud and asked Raina to accept it as well. Raina refused too, Penelope segued them into a final conversation that could distract her from the slow shutdown of her body. They spoke of anime, all while Raina continued to feverishly work and insist the bleeding was diminishing. That false hope was quickly crushed as things took a turn for the worse, Penelope's senses also began to give out as she shut down. First her vision, then her hearing, and Penelope began to panic as her ability to tell Raina was still with her was diminishing. They held on to each other for a while, Penelope ranting, trying to comfort Raina and trying to get a message home. But then sensation also died in Penelope's extremities, and she began to believe Raina had abandoned her even when her friend was right there next to her. Penelope died alone, scared, begging someone to hold her and be there for her.

Post-Game Evaluation: The fear and pain are over now, friend. You have earned whatever peace lies beyond, and even if you yourself refuse to believe in it I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by what awaits you. Your light, and the light of all your class you believed in with all your young innocent heart. It never died, and it never will. - Boris Petrikov

Memorable Quotes: "No matter what happens though... don't let yourself lose control. Don't do what they want. For any reason. (...) I'm going to make things right. I guarantee it." -- Penelope's final words to Asuka.

"If... if you do what you're planning on doing... you may walk out of here, still ambulatory, still respirating, still metabolizing... But you won't be alive. Part of you will have died here, with everyone else, and you'll never get it back." -- Another part of Penelope's rebuttal of Astrid's intent to kill.

"May you find peace, Astrid, whatever path you choose." -- Her final words to her former friend.

"I'm really not sure what's going to happen next, or especially if I even believe we'll even succeed in this crazy mission of ours (...) But, that just means we'll have to believe in the world who believes in us. Together." -- Her assertion to Ben as they begin their mission.

"... The idea is in a normal terrorist attack, we would have all died instantly. (...) We would all... we'd already be dead. And I think that we should all be able to just... accept that. (...) It sucks, I know it does. But it happens. We aren't any more special than anyone else. We don't deserve to live more than anyone else." -- While explaining her plan to newcomers Kizi and Lili.

Other/Trivia

 * Penelope is an almost entirely accurate insert of her handler, VoltTurtle, with the only differences being her appearance and slight parts of her history.

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Penelope, in chronological order.

Memories From The Past:
 * At The End of Everything

V6 Pregame:
 * Diaries
 * Skeletons and Spaghetti

Sadie Hawkins Dance:
 * The Sweetest Things

V6:
 * A World Of Sadness
 * Quickdraw
 * Desolate Dreams
 * Haunted Reality
 * See The Needy Greedy Me We Bleed To Feed So Easily
 * Hemochromatosis
 * Haemolacria
 * Drawn To The Blood
 * Hyphaema
 * Minus Something
 * Anemia

Related Threads in Meanwhile:
 * Life Itself

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Penelope Fitzgerald. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''

My V6 duo might seems strange at first, given that the two of them are complete polar opposites in every way imaginable, and you could very easily wonder why I chose to do things as I did; not only with the overall ideas, but in the actual executions of the characters themselves. I'm here now to give some author's commentary (as it were) on the both of them, and try to go over what my intentions were, what I think I did well, and what I think I did poorly.

In Penelope's case, I wanted to write a character that (as a character) would steadfastly refuse to change whatsoever in the face of the island around her, a character that would rather try to force the world around her to change, rather than willingly adapting to the unreasonable situation she was placed in. Penelope's story was, in this way, defined by her constant struggle to see the good in the people around her and make sure that goodness and fairness prevailed, even in a situation that was (by all metrics) horrifically evil and unfair.

In the end, however, she was doomed to fail on her quest, and I made sure that my primary plan throughout the game was seeing her utter failure in the face of adversity to its final conclusion. Penelope's story is a constant stream of trying to redeem those who are lost and finding like minded people to have strength in numbers. She tries her best to refuse to change in the face of things- but some things still get through (such as her willingness to let the most violent people on the island be killed).

My biggest regret is that, unfortunately, I couldn't make a character that intentionally stagnates at the white end of the morality spectrum all that interesting. There were multiple ideas I had to keep momentum up, but unfortunately all of those plans fell through and Penelope usually wound up rolling back to just doing what she was doing. I didn't have the chance to change her while still keeping her morally pure, and while I wish that I had gotten at least one of those chances at some point (she likely would have had a vastly different story if any of those ideas had gone through) those failed ideas are a part of roleplaying, and I don't hold any ill feelings about them.

Her story being stagnant isn't to say that she was all bad however- I seemed to manage to get her moral purity to resonate with people, as I saw multiple people express that they wanted to see her succeed in her doomed prospects, and I had several scenes that I am very proud of (the confrontation with Astrid being one I won't go over) and many different quotable things that some people seem to have appreciated. Her death though, at least for me, takes the cake. I think that Penelope's death is probably the single bit of writing I'm most proud of on SOTF as a whole, and is my personal favorite just from the amount of effort and heart that I put into it.

With Penelope's death I wanted to combine all of my worst, primal fears into one death and make something that would eclipse everything I've written before in how painful it is to go through- drawing on several symbolic motifs that I had built up to that point in Penelope's story to really twist the knife further. I wanted something that people would read and not enjoy at all- not due to technical weakness, but in just how uncomfortable it would make the reader. A young girl who constantly saw the best in everyone and tried her hardest to make things right in a supremely fucked up situation died in one of the most agonizing ways possible for basically no reason. It's tragic and painful, and I think I did it extremely well, even if it didn't resonate quite as much as I hoped it would with the rest of SOTF's handlers.

All in all, Penelope's story is one that I wish I had the chance to redo large portions of due to missed opportunities, but ultimately I can't pick any one thread that I think just shouldn't exist outright, and her end was one of the things that I don't think I could realistically do better, so I think she will stay alone in the eternal dark, for now. -VoltTurtle